Prepare a formal written farm

CROSS COUNTRY DIGEST MANITOBA The details of Manitoba’s water strategy will dominate winter meetings

Provincial government backs vertical farming of leafy greens in Longueuil

KAREN DAVIDSON

A new water management strategy was unveiled by the Manitoba government in November 2022, the first in 20 years, and it’s not a moment too soon. Wet and dry cycles can last for years, yet they may transition quickly from one to the other in a single season.

“We’re tapped out,” says Pamela Kolochuk, CEO of Peak of the Market. “Our ability to irrigate is maxed out. We have 10,000 acres of fresh vegetables and in addition to water for irrigation, many of these vegetables need to be washed.”

Vegetable production in Manitoba runs the gamut from fresh potatoes to carrots, parsnips, beets, onions, cabbage, broccoli and squash.

“Our collective water needs are changing,” said Heather Stefanson, Manitoba premier. “Our growing communities, vibrant agriculture sector and expanding industries all depend on continued access to water. At the same time, climate change and extreme weather, such as floods and droughts, have a significant impact on water availability and security.”

To date, stakeholder engagement has been administered through Enterprise Machine Intelligence and Learning Initiative (EMILI). Kolochuk gave a candid assessment to EMILI in November 2021. She wrote:

“Irrigation will become the biggest use of water in Manitoba going forward. Large-scale processing facilities like those for McCain Foods and Simplot will require irrigated land, which might have the effect of limiting overall growing area. Other uses of water throughout the supply chain include the washing and processing of vegetables at the grower level.

Key to all of this – and a possible point of contention, layered on top of localized issues that exist within each watershed –will be determining who should have priority access to water during times of drought. And granting that water supply in a way that doesn’t undermine local aquatic ecosystems. Right now, agricultural irrigators appear to be fifth or sixth on the list of stakeholders, and behind golf courses in terms of overall consumption.

Doing a better job of recycling water would help. To enable the agriculture and agri-food processing sectors to take advantage of market opportunities will also require working to bring some municipalities around to the benefits of expanding irrigation and creating a more accurate portrayal of the positives of irrigation. Instead, there appears to be this public perception that expanding irrigation capacity will hurt the environment and reduce drinking water supplies, both of which are untrue.

There’s a lack of clarity right now around water resources in the province –who owns the water? Which entities have authority and oversight over water? There are even questions about whether we have accurate information on water resources. Various reports say that a number of aquifers in the Winkler area are fully allocated when there’s good reason to believe they aren’t.

These are issues we need to figure out and allocate water accordingly, because otherwise we are unnecessarily limiting our irrigation capacity in Manitoba, when we should really be doing something big here with irrigation. Allocation right now appears to be more politically motivated or determined, and not based on science.

Both Alberta and Saskatchewan, meanwhile, have made big announcements recently about their plans to support increases in irrigation, yet Manitoba has done nothing. The Saskatchewan-built Lake Diefenbaker (a man-made lake) is now the site of building a new connected irrigation network. We don’t have anything like that in Manitoba – and yet we have more water and lakes than either province. Large-scale processors such as McCain and Simplot will need irrigated land, which produces far more potatoes than unirrigated fields, she said. Washing potatoes and vegetables also takes a lot of water.

In some areas, including Portage and Winkler, farms can’t drill wells but they can pump water from rivers within the limits of a water license, Kolochuk said. Some farms aren’t close enough to rivers, so they’ve built reservoirs to capture runoff for irrigation. This takes up valuable land.

To read the water management strategy and learn more about next steps visit: https://manitoba.ca/sd/pubs/water/water_ mgmt_strategy2022.pdf.

QUÉBEC

Canada’s leading vertical farming company, GoodLeaf Farms, is on track to open a climate-controlled indoor farm in the Montreal suburb of Longueuil by the middle of 2023.

The new farm, which has been supported by a $7-million loan from the Government of Québec

and several smaller grants from various economic development agencies including Développement économique de l’agglomération de Longueuil (DEL), is being built on boul. Clairevue site, in close proximity to Highway 20 and the St. Hubert-Longueuil Airport. The 100,000-square-foot vertical farm will produce 1.9 million pounds of microgreens and baby greens for grocery stores and the hospitality sector across Québec, with capacity to also service Atlantic Canada.

With Quebec’s limited growing season, most open-field farms can harvest one crop a year, whereas GoodLeaf’s climatecontrolled indoor farms are able to grow and harvest more than 40 crops of a microgreen each year, and more than 20 crops of a baby green — a dramatic increase in productivity.

The farm also provides a local food source for a product that is typically imported — as much as 90 per cent of the leafy greens on store shelves in Québec are trucked from the southwestern United States. Growing these greens locally and reducing the number of trucks on the road reduces carbon emissions significantly.

GoodLeaf’s system is also free of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides, has no risk of fertilizer run-off into local water sources, and uses 95 per cent less water than the same crops in an open-field farm. The cuttingedge technology used in vertical farming results in a sustainable solution for farmers, retailers, the food service sector and consumers.

GoodLeaf Farms grows microgreens and baby greens including pea shoots, micro radish, spinach, arugula, and spring mix.

“GoodLeaf is building a national network of vertical farms, ensuring Canadians from coast to coast have access to fresh, sustainably and locally grown leafy greens year round,” says Barry Murche, CEO, GoodLeaf Farms. Our new farm in Longueuil is perfectly located to support all consumers across Québec via retailers and food service operators”

Source: GoodLeaf Farms November 29, 2022 news release